The Spirit of Knowledge Charter School is on the verge of possibly closing because of financial mismanagement, academic failure and, most importantly, because of an addiction to an irrational snobbishness.

The first two are self-inflicted wounds, but the third is a product of the school overdosing on the addictive and poisonous charter school philosophy state education policy-makers have been marketing.

The school could perhaps save itself if it acknowledges that it is not offering its students an education that is superior to what is being offered in the Worcester public schools, and that being a charter school does not make it immune to the challenges of inner-city schools. That way it could perhaps detect and fix its faults.

Yet despite its many struggles, the school continues to think of itself as being better than the Worcester public schools. At a Thursday evening board meeting to discuss the status of the school, for example, Spirit of Knowledge parents and students demonized the Worcester public schools.

I was left with the impression that the worst of their fears is not that their school might close, but that they would be forced to return to the Worcester public schools. These parents and students seemed sincerely convinced that the Worcester public school system, which serves almost 25,000 kids compared with the 158 at the Spirit of Knowledge, is a real hellhole.

Such an unhinged outlook could perhaps be explained if the school were exemplary in its academic performance and personnel management, but it is not. Far from it — unless you believe, as the school's martial arts instructor does, that negative media coverage is the reason the school is not seen as exemplary, and why it is on the verge of losing its charter.

But the media did not manufacture the $400,000 the school lost by failing to properly identify the poverty level of its student body. The media had nothing to do with the approximately $180,000 the school lost, and is trying to recoup, from a failed real estate deal. The media didn't make allegations that staff members at the school were sexually harassing students and teaching classes while inebriated.

Having four executive directors in four years, and about 100 percent turnover in its once 16-member board, is not a media creation.

It is not the media's fault that the state failed to act decisively to head off the train wreck that a lot of people saw coming, or that the state chose the most inopportune time, two months into the school year, to question the school's viability. The latter decision is directly related to the school losing its line of credit, and to the potential of seniors having to finish their high school career elsewhere.

With just a little bit of humility, this school would be garnering a bunch of sympathy and perhaps some helping hands.

Indeed, as much of a critic as I am of charter schools (I see them as a tool to privatize public education), it was heart-wrenching to listen to students and parents as they expressed their pain and agony at the prospect of losing a school in which they had so fully invested themselves.

But how can you sympathize with a school that clings so stubbornly to the belief that its problem is not the huge hole in the hull of its sinking ship, but the impertinence of the water that is rushing in?

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